Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories

Its shortcomings far outweigh its merits, but what merits they are - Disaster Report 4 is silly, humane and utterly charming.

Disaster Report 4 depicts a strange and consequence-averse crisis, in which you’re usually little more than a hapless observer.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is an absolute mess from start to finish. The puzzles that stand in the way of your progress are almost universally illogical leading to an experience that frustrates throughout. This would perhaps – at a push – be worth persevering with if the story were engaging enough, but the tale told here is so silly that it could have been generated by pulling plot twists out of a hat. Throw in a creepy vibe, crummy production values, and dodgy controls, and you're left with an unmitigated disasterpiece that you should avoid like it's got the coronavirus.

If you can fight past the technical shortcomings – which, it's worth stating, are pretty considerable – then you'll find an experience that's totally unique on Switch, and that's no mean feat when you consider the depth of the console's library.

What players might expect out of Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories and what it actually is are two entirely different things.

Disaster Report 4 might be technically lacking in a lot of areas, but it is stuffed full of heart.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories took a long time to reach us - more than nine years, to be exact. That said, it's undeniable that this game features interesting characters, a degree of freedom that's worth the praise and multiple endings that will get players to return to it over and over again. Unfortunately its technical execution is very far from ideal and the heavy, clunky and unstable way it runs will definitely put many players off, which is a shame because Disaster Report 4 gets a lot of things right.

In the end, I enjoyed my overall time with Disaster Report 4. I spent a little over 15 hours with the game and it was a truly interesting experience. I still don’t think it’s worth $60 whatsoever. Nevertheless, if you want to go on a unique journey and you happen to have a PS4 or a decent computer, I’d definitely recommend trying out the game should it go on sale. It’s most definitely an experience worth going on at least once if you’re curious. Disaster Report 4 has its own special sort of charm regardless of not being the highest quality title performance-wise.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is definitely not worth the $60 retail price but it would be worth picking up in the $20 to $40 range.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is a perfect example of a beautiful story that falls short on execution. The creators seem to have put more effort into the characters than into the game itself. You also go through the game fairly quickly, if it does not crash. The appearance of the game is somewhat disappointing as well.